DeSantis' success with moderates and left leaning people was entirely derived from him letting people party during COVID. After the 2022 midterms, once it became apparent he's a super right wing weirdo he lost a lot of support amongst this cohort. Florida has always been a purplish state and his attempts to turn our state into Mississippi in one legislative session has turned away many former ardent supporters of his.
I live in Florida and know many people who fit this description. Voted for Hillary and/or Biden, loved how DeSantis handled the Pandemic but are now questioning their support since the midterms.
Nate, I'm so happy that you're posting regularly on Substack! I decided to stop reading much on Fivethirtyeight a year or so ago, but I'd enjoyed the stray tweet or article of yours that made it into my orbit. Looking forward to a regular supply of sensible, well-informed commentary from you.
> 2014: DeSantis wins re-election over David Cox by 25.0 points. However, his district had a very strong Republican lean that year, and 2014 was a great year for Republicans. In fact, the Generic Republican Benchmark was 27.5 points, a bit higher than DeSantis’s margin.
At some point, does it make sense to just throw out a data point like this entirely, rather than try to interpret it vis-a-vis Gene Eric Republican's chances?
To take it to a silly extreme, suppose you'd expect the Republican to win a district 90-10 and DeSantis wins "only" 88-12. Would there really be any meat on the bones of this datum, or would you just treat it as out-of-sample for trying to predict a more regular election?
Omg, you don’t age adjust Covid death rate during the pandemic stage because we transformed society to protect the elderly. Florida’s Covid death rate is terrible because DeSantis politicized public health mitigation measures and opposed masking and low information Trump voters didn’t get vaccinated in high enough numbers and so the state had an entirely preventable Delta death surge.
As % below poverty rate is the most important factor for an American population’s Covid death rate all things being equal Florida could have had a death rate similar to North Carolina’s had DeSantis been more aggressive with public health mitigation measures like Cooper. The 4 biggest factors for Covid death rate in America are:
1. Initial wave
2. Travel restrictions
3. After 1/2021 low information Trump population
4. On the low end age is a big factor like Utah and Austin and DC
I checked out your Twitter account and if people really are interested in analyzing Covid data you need to start out by looking at the graphs of the 7 day rolling average of Covid deaths by day for various states.
So first check out NY and then check out FL…you will see NY hit 900 deaths per day from spread before any public health mitigation measures were implemented. That’s a 9/11 in 3 days and NY never gets anywhere close to that for the rest of the pandemic. When you check out Florida their high death days were during the Delta death surge in which vaccines were widely available and we also understood that public health mitigation measures, although not a silver bullet, mitigated spread to some degree.
The notion all deaths are equal when analyzing mitigation measures when in the NEC a large percentage of deaths were from spread (from Europe via JFK and Logan) in February 2020 is absurd! And the nursing home stuff is a red herring as all states ended up with similar nursing home death rates as social distancing in nursing homes was impossible and testing was suboptimal and so vaccines ended those deaths. But if Cuomo did a terrible job with nursing homes keep in mind NY has a significantly higher nursing home population than Florida and yet NY has significantly fewer overall deaths than Florida…and nursing home patients at some point in the pandemic were 1/3 of all deaths prior to the availability of the vaccines and ended up around 20%.
North Carolina has just as strong an economy but the governor didn’t oppose masking and so it has a significantly lower Covid death rate…I generally take Chinese bioweapons seriously unlike DeSantis. ;)
Everyone keeps forgetting about Hurricane Ian and the likely effect it had on Desantis's reelection numbers in '22. It faded from the national consciousness relatively quickly but not so much in Florida. Recall Christie's post-Sandy blowout in Jersey.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — This Afternoon, Governor Ron DeSantis issued updates on Hurricane Ian at the State Emergency Operations Center with Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie. Full remarks are available here.
Ian became a Category 3 hurricane early this morning and is located in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, roughly 180 miles south of Punta Gorda as of 8pm. Hurricane Ian will approach the southwest coast of Florida on Wednesday and storm impacts are expected to spread northward throughout the week.
Mandatory Evacuation Orders have been issued for coastal communities, mobile homes and low-lying areas in the following counties:
This was very helpful. I went to Florida in August of 21 (very heavily vaccinated and staying outside), and we were all flabbergasted at how different it felt. I started thinking I was crazy for wearing a mask inside (and I'm in Ohio, though the cities in Ohio felt very different than the rural areas). This makes it all kind of make sense with his popularity. I didn't ever want to go back!
Opposing masking and vaccinations is something I will never understand…I get keeping schools open and but I will never understand why the right wing echo chamber turned on all public health mitigation measures?? I kept an open mind and listened to Alex Berenson and you could hear him sweating through the radio during the Delta death surge wishcasting that the vaccines fail and NYC gets swamped by deaths when the wave hits it…it didn’t, the vaccines held up against Delta and the right wing echo chamber ended up being wrong about everything Covid related.
I think it's a symptom of polarization, the demonizing of any policy that comes from the other side. And this is not just an issue on the right, it's also on the left. You don't just have different ways of looking at things (schools staying open) you're trying to kill teachers... You don't just believe vaccines are good for people, you're destroying freedom.
And I fear the more we participate in this from any direction, the worse off we'll all be.
Great comment. What’s funny about American politics is how much time we spend learning about the scandals of politicians we would never vote for in a million years. So take the Justice Kavanaugh hearings…why would Democrats want to help vet him when they would be better off him being seated and then a scandal coming out when they are in power so they can replace him?? I think this current political media climate is great at driving up the opposing side’s negatives which exacerbates polarization.
I have one question, who cares? Even if DeSatan wins the primaries, he will be destroyed by anyone, including a head of lettuce in the general. He can’t run away from his policies and legislative bills passed. Democrats have the receipts.
And I Don’t care about polls right now. Most of the public won’t pay attention until the first debates, and DeSatan won’t look good to the sane Americans who make up at least 60% of the population.
And speaking of debates, has anyone watched him during the governor debates? I live in Florida and watched the man disintegrate before my eyes. If Pence can be described as a card board cutout, DeSatan is a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming oil tanker speeding down the the highway to hell. And if you’re wondering what happens; let’s just say it doesn’t end well for Bambi!....:)
Once you get the nomination it's basically a coin flip if you win the general it seems, as Trump has shown. It's so easy to backtrack on controversial positions as needed, voters have a very short attention span. And as much as I like Biden, I don't think he'll be particularly formidable in 2024.
True, since we have an electoral college and the election will be decided in four swing states. With Trump, I’m in agreement, with DeSatan, he can’t backtrack because he has a record of passing demonic legislation that he, himself, pushed through the state legislature.
Uh, around 20,000 Floridians died unnecessarily because he opposed masking and other public health mitigation measures. So he killed a lot more Americans than Osama Bin Laden but apparently now Republicans don’t care about protecting Americans from Chinese bioweapons?!?
I think you're missing the main point. DeSantis is known as the anti-woke candidate, and you can love or loathe him for that. But the real point is, that's all he has. What does he have to say about inflation, or Ukraine, or energy policy, or anything of importance? Literally nothing. He's death on Mickey Mouse and that is it. Of course he can't be President.
His big problem is that he is devoid of any charm which is necessary to win at the national level. Also, he does not have a relatable vision of where he wants to take the country. His campaign is just a series slogans from GOP talking points.
Not getting your math? Basically he equaled or exceeded your generic Republican score every time. When he was low he was a point or two low. Well within a reasonable standard deviation of the median? If you live in or pay attention to Florida. His accomplishments go well beyond COVID, see hurricane response, policy towards Everglades preservation, education, etc.. Not sure why he isn’t doing better but the bad weeks narratives you quoted have generally been created by the press and between Biden and Trump legal issues there hasn’t been much oxygen left in the news cycle
DeSantis' success with moderates and left leaning people was entirely derived from him letting people party during COVID. After the 2022 midterms, once it became apparent he's a super right wing weirdo he lost a lot of support amongst this cohort. Florida has always been a purplish state and his attempts to turn our state into Mississippi in one legislative session has turned away many former ardent supporters of his.
Interesting, do you have any sources on this or are you basing this off personal experience?
I live in Florida and know many people who fit this description. Voted for Hillary and/or Biden, loved how DeSantis handled the Pandemic but are now questioning their support since the midterms.
Nate, I'm so happy that you're posting regularly on Substack! I decided to stop reading much on Fivethirtyeight a year or so ago, but I'd enjoyed the stray tweet or article of yours that made it into my orbit. Looking forward to a regular supply of sensible, well-informed commentary from you.
> 2014: DeSantis wins re-election over David Cox by 25.0 points. However, his district had a very strong Republican lean that year, and 2014 was a great year for Republicans. In fact, the Generic Republican Benchmark was 27.5 points, a bit higher than DeSantis’s margin.
At some point, does it make sense to just throw out a data point like this entirely, rather than try to interpret it vis-a-vis Gene Eric Republican's chances?
To take it to a silly extreme, suppose you'd expect the Republican to win a district 90-10 and DeSantis wins "only" 88-12. Would there really be any meat on the bones of this datum, or would you just treat it as out-of-sample for trying to predict a more regular election?
Omg, you don’t age adjust Covid death rate during the pandemic stage because we transformed society to protect the elderly. Florida’s Covid death rate is terrible because DeSantis politicized public health mitigation measures and opposed masking and low information Trump voters didn’t get vaccinated in high enough numbers and so the state had an entirely preventable Delta death surge.
As % below poverty rate is the most important factor for an American population’s Covid death rate all things being equal Florida could have had a death rate similar to North Carolina’s had DeSantis been more aggressive with public health mitigation measures like Cooper. The 4 biggest factors for Covid death rate in America are:
1. Initial wave
2. Travel restrictions
3. After 1/2021 low information Trump population
4. On the low end age is a big factor like Utah and Austin and DC
I checked out your Twitter account and if people really are interested in analyzing Covid data you need to start out by looking at the graphs of the 7 day rolling average of Covid deaths by day for various states.
So first check out NY and then check out FL…you will see NY hit 900 deaths per day from spread before any public health mitigation measures were implemented. That’s a 9/11 in 3 days and NY never gets anywhere close to that for the rest of the pandemic. When you check out Florida their high death days were during the Delta death surge in which vaccines were widely available and we also understood that public health mitigation measures, although not a silver bullet, mitigated spread to some degree.
The notion all deaths are equal when analyzing mitigation measures when in the NEC a large percentage of deaths were from spread (from Europe via JFK and Logan) in February 2020 is absurd! And the nursing home stuff is a red herring as all states ended up with similar nursing home death rates as social distancing in nursing homes was impossible and testing was suboptimal and so vaccines ended those deaths. But if Cuomo did a terrible job with nursing homes keep in mind NY has a significantly higher nursing home population than Florida and yet NY has significantly fewer overall deaths than Florida…and nursing home patients at some point in the pandemic were 1/3 of all deaths prior to the availability of the vaccines and ended up around 20%.
Great analysis. I was in Florida during COVID and there was tremendous gratitude that the state was still open.
North Carolina has just as strong an economy but the governor didn’t oppose masking and so it has a significantly lower Covid death rate…I generally take Chinese bioweapons seriously unlike DeSantis. ;)
In November 2022? The nation’s most locked-down state, California, had been completely open since June 2021.
Everyone keeps forgetting about Hurricane Ian and the likely effect it had on Desantis's reelection numbers in '22. It faded from the national consciousness relatively quickly but not so much in Florida. Recall Christie's post-Sandy blowout in Jersey.
Great point. And DeSantis mandated evacuations and shut down schools for weeks.
He did not mandate evac. That's why so many people died in ft myers.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — This Afternoon, Governor Ron DeSantis issued updates on Hurricane Ian at the State Emergency Operations Center with Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie. Full remarks are available here.
Ian became a Category 3 hurricane early this morning and is located in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, roughly 180 miles south of Punta Gorda as of 8pm. Hurricane Ian will approach the southwest coast of Florida on Wednesday and storm impacts are expected to spread northward throughout the week.
Mandatory Evacuation Orders have been issued for coastal communities, mobile homes and low-lying areas in the following counties:
This was very helpful. I went to Florida in August of 21 (very heavily vaccinated and staying outside), and we were all flabbergasted at how different it felt. I started thinking I was crazy for wearing a mask inside (and I'm in Ohio, though the cities in Ohio felt very different than the rural areas). This makes it all kind of make sense with his popularity. I didn't ever want to go back!
Opposing masking and vaccinations is something I will never understand…I get keeping schools open and but I will never understand why the right wing echo chamber turned on all public health mitigation measures?? I kept an open mind and listened to Alex Berenson and you could hear him sweating through the radio during the Delta death surge wishcasting that the vaccines fail and NYC gets swamped by deaths when the wave hits it…it didn’t, the vaccines held up against Delta and the right wing echo chamber ended up being wrong about everything Covid related.
I think it's a symptom of polarization, the demonizing of any policy that comes from the other side. And this is not just an issue on the right, it's also on the left. You don't just have different ways of looking at things (schools staying open) you're trying to kill teachers... You don't just believe vaccines are good for people, you're destroying freedom.
And I fear the more we participate in this from any direction, the worse off we'll all be.
Great comment. What’s funny about American politics is how much time we spend learning about the scandals of politicians we would never vote for in a million years. So take the Justice Kavanaugh hearings…why would Democrats want to help vet him when they would be better off him being seated and then a scandal coming out when they are in power so they can replace him?? I think this current political media climate is great at driving up the opposing side’s negatives which exacerbates polarization.
We like to prove (to ourselves) how right we are, that's for sure.
I have one question, who cares? Even if DeSatan wins the primaries, he will be destroyed by anyone, including a head of lettuce in the general. He can’t run away from his policies and legislative bills passed. Democrats have the receipts.
And I Don’t care about polls right now. Most of the public won’t pay attention until the first debates, and DeSatan won’t look good to the sane Americans who make up at least 60% of the population.
And speaking of debates, has anyone watched him during the governor debates? I live in Florida and watched the man disintegrate before my eyes. If Pence can be described as a card board cutout, DeSatan is a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming oil tanker speeding down the the highway to hell. And if you’re wondering what happens; let’s just say it doesn’t end well for Bambi!....:)
Once you get the nomination it's basically a coin flip if you win the general it seems, as Trump has shown. It's so easy to backtrack on controversial positions as needed, voters have a very short attention span. And as much as I like Biden, I don't think he'll be particularly formidable in 2024.
True, since we have an electoral college and the election will be decided in four swing states. With Trump, I’m in agreement, with DeSatan, he can’t backtrack because he has a record of passing demonic legislation that he, himself, pushed through the state legislature.
Bottom line: Democrats have the receipts...:)
Gillum won the Bernie Sanders way by getting 35% in the primary…Gwen Graham running on Medicaid expansion would have beat DeathSantis fairly easily.
This makes sense. He played chicken with COVID and won. That could explain lot of his momentum in 2022. Since then he’s focusing on culture war.
Uh, around 20,000 Floridians died unnecessarily because he opposed masking and other public health mitigation measures. So he killed a lot more Americans than Osama Bin Laden but apparently now Republicans don’t care about protecting Americans from Chinese bioweapons?!?
much better than infamous primary-season flameouts like Scott Walker, Jeb Bush or Kalama Harris ever polled.2
This is such a nitpick, but I think you meant Kamala Harris, not Kalama.
I think you're missing the main point. DeSantis is known as the anti-woke candidate, and you can love or loathe him for that. But the real point is, that's all he has. What does he have to say about inflation, or Ukraine, or energy policy, or anything of importance? Literally nothing. He's death on Mickey Mouse and that is it. Of course he can't be President.
His big problem is that he is devoid of any charm which is necessary to win at the national level. Also, he does not have a relatable vision of where he wants to take the country. His campaign is just a series slogans from GOP talking points.
“Kalama” Harris? Come on dude, please. Getting non-white names right is just not that difficult.
Is mispronouncing DuhSantis as racist as mispronouncing KaMAla??
Not getting your math? Basically he equaled or exceeded your generic Republican score every time. When he was low he was a point or two low. Well within a reasonable standard deviation of the median? If you live in or pay attention to Florida. His accomplishments go well beyond COVID, see hurricane response, policy towards Everglades preservation, education, etc.. Not sure why he isn’t doing better but the bad weeks narratives you quoted have generally been created by the press and between Biden and Trump legal issues there hasn’t been much oxygen left in the news cycle
DeSantis would be popular with these Maryland parents. He would be boosted by the forces that elected Youngkin.
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/education/school-district-says-it-banned-opt-out-lgbtq-lessons-because-too-many
It’s shocking how much the 2024 GOP primary appears to be a repeat of the 2016 primary, and Ron DeSantis is looking more like a Jeb Bush every day.
State politics are very different from national politics, and unfortunately DeSantis had a bad national strategy.